How Snapchat Is Empowering Rape Survivors in India

For the most part, Snapchat filters are meant to be silly. But while we've all been using them to take goofy selfies and see what we'd look like as a puppy or with our friend's face, one journalist in India has harnessed filters for a larger purpose: empowering rape survivors to speak out about their assault.

Yusuf Omar is the mobile editor of the Hindustan Times in India. Earlier this summer, he was covering a mountain climbing event for sexual abuse survivors, and found himself struggling with a unique problem. He couldn't really do justice to a story about sexual assault without including the voices of the survivors themselves, but many don't want to go public—and, besides, it's actually illegal to publicly identify survivors of sexual abuse in India (more on that later).

That's when Omar realized that he could use Snapchat filters to disguise survivors, freeing them to tell their stories on their own terms. The two young women who chose to go on camera did so veiled in a dragon filter.

The resulting video is powerful—and so are its implications. Telling the story of an assault can be liberating for survivors, and is one step forward in our collective efforts to address rape culture. We wanted to learn more about Omar's work to empower rape survivors in India, so we caught up with the journalist over Skype this week. If you want to follow Omar on Snapchat, use the Snapcode below. Read on for our conversation.

Yusuf Omar: I found out about a Climb Against Sexual Abuse [event] that was happening in Mysore, outside of Bangalore. I had to cover it—I was very very passionate about the story—but when I was getting there, a few things emerged that made covering the story difficult. Firstly, in India it's illegal to show the identities of sexual abuse survivors in the media. There's a big debate about why that is... and I can see on your face you're wondering about that.

G: Yeah, why is that?

YO: Because of the stigma that is attached to being a rape survivor. Often, in India, rape survivors are people who have overcome these great atrocities, are alienated from their families, are thrown out of society, left to fend for themselves. So I suppose the lawmakers would see it as naming and shaming the survivors.

There is some truth to that—if the media were irresponsible about it, that could have devastating consequences for young men and women because of these rape stigmas—but there’s a downside, in my opinion.

Men and women should be allowed to talk about sexual abuse. Without talking, there are no steps toward recovery. People end up bottling up, feeling as if this is a disease or something they brought upon themselves. They don’t have the opportunities to speak to other sexual abuse survivors and be able to relate to each other’s stories. And if nobody’s speaking out, it’s difficult to identify who is committing these crimes. A lot of it gets swept under the carpet because of an archaic law that they believe is designed to protect the survivors but which is doing more harm than good.

G: What inspired you to use Snapchat filters to let these survivors tell their stories?

YO: Do you remember when the Orlando shootings happened, afterward the lover of the guy who did it came forward and did an interview with a television station? And they used makeup and even a mask to hide his face. And I just thought it turned him into a monster. It was distracting.

So I thought, using technology, there has to be a better way to hide the identities of people who don’t want to be disclosed. And Snapchat was something that I’ve been experimenting with in the newsroom for ages.

G: What was the experience of filming them on Snapchat like?

YO: These girls had never used Snapchat before; most of them had never even heard of it. It’s rural India, data is prohibitively expensive. But they are familiar with the selfie—a selfie is something they’ve done over and over again.

So we get to the top of the mountain and, in the shadows of this temple at the back of Chamundi Hill, I started by putting the camera on myself and swiping through the filters on my face, and that caused them to laugh, giggle. And then I encouraged them to do the same. I wasn’t even holding the device. They held it and they swiped until they found something appropriate.

G: They both chose a dragon filter. Why do you think that is?

YO: You can extrapolate on what that meant, whether it was because they were getting out their demons, or whatever. I don't think it was any of that—I think it was the filter that offered the most coverage. Roses on the head don't quite do it if you're trying to hide your identity.

But the key word here is choice. They were the ones that were empowered to choose exactly how they were represented.

G: Do you think that because they recorded themselves selfie style, instead of telling their story to you—a strange man they don’t know well—they were able to be more candid?

YO: Exactly right. it was like they were looking into a mirror and dictating the most horrendous story that nobody would ever want to recount.

On some level it felt like they had never said these things out loud, especially not looking themselves in the eyes. Both of them were visibly shaking by the end of it, teary-eyed, emotional. I definitely think they were more blunt, more straightforward, more honest and more themselves because they were looking at themselves, talking to themselves as though nobody else was up on that mountaintop.

G: Do you think that this technique, if used widely, could have an impact on the stigma surrounding rape survivors in India or elsewhere? Could this change lives?

YO: It has created a lot of dialogue around rape and rape culture. I think in order to complete the circle, for this to become truly effective, you need to have counselors, police, health service workers also within whatever ecosystem these survivors are using. So if they're talking on Snapchat, there need to be police who can respond to them on Snapchat, there needs to be a counselor who can guide them. We need to make it so that intimate conversations can take place in these spaces, and then I think we’ll see real change.